The Trouble With Virtue: A Comfortable Wife\A Lady by Day (33 page)

The devil he had. But if he thought she was going to scream and cower, he was destined for disappointment. “Please continue, Mary.”

After a moment’s hesitation Mary unpinned the right side of Josephine’s stomacher. “What information about the shipyard do you find such a pressing need to discover, Sir Noah?”

More pins, and Mary lifted the stomacher away.

Sir Noah’s eyes roamed over Josephine’s shift and stays. “I suppose we could start with the number of ships currently under contract,” he suggested.

“Seventeen.”

“
Seventeen.
I saw only four in the shipyard yesterday.”

Off came the morning’s jupe, billowing over her shoulders and head before Mary whisked it away and left her in petticoats. “Shipbuilding is a robust business—or were you not aware of that when you arrived at the idea to start your own shipyard?”

He smiled a little. “Truth be told, I wasn’t aware of much. Bit foxed at the time, I’m afraid.” He rubbed his chin, and her eye followed the Ottoman design tattooed on the back of his hand.

“Do you always develop ideas for grand business ventures when you’re intoxicated, Sir Noah?”

“Mmm,” he said noncommittally. Those blue eyes wandered over her lazily while Mary cinched a new petticoat. “Sometimes I develop other ideas.”

A sensation like a warm wind feathered her skin.

“But this
particular
time,” she pressed, ignoring all that, “you decided that your life would not be complete until you’d uprooted your elderly cousin and built a shipyard of your own.”

His eyes flew sharply to hers, but as usual, he smiled. “The flight of fancy of a pair of drunken sailors,” he said. “Turned out not to seem so fanciful by the light of day.”

“You have a partner in this undertaking?”

“Not unless Elias changes his mind.”

“You said
pair
of sailors.”

“A friend.” Sir Noah pushed away from the doorjamb and idly crossed the dressing room, pausing to study a statuette while Mary briskly added the afternoon’s jupe and pinned on a gray stomacher with blue lace.

“One who apparently did not find the idea quite so unfanciful,” she said.

“My friend is dead.” He walked to the connecting door and looked into her bedchamber.

“I’m sorry.” She watched him cast his eye about her bedchamber—the walls, the furnishings.

The bed.

Something captured his attention and he took a few steps into the room where he had absolutely no right and no business being, to look at—devil
take
it—the painting of Gibraltar over her fireplace.

Already her mind raced for an explanation, reached for a cool tone that would betray nothing of what the painting meant to her.

“This is quite a magnificent rendition of the Rock at sunset,” he called.

Sunset, not sunrise—he knew it that intimately, her beloved Rock.

Mary finished pinning the robe into place and finally—
finally—
Josephine was dressed for the afternoon. “Please tell Lettie and Pauline that I shall be with them shortly,” Josephine said to Mary. And then to Sir Noah, “When I saw how the colors in the painting matched the room, there was no question I had to have it.” He did not need to know that the painting had come first and the room decor second.

He emerged from her bedchamber, and she finally drew breath. “And here I thought perhaps you had a secret fondness for the Mediterranean,” he said.

She wanted to ask if he’d been ashore at Gibraltar recently, and if it had changed, and what he thought of the Rock when it was shrouded in mist.

Instead, she laughed. “The Mediterranean is
your
province, Sir Noah.”

He stopped in front of her. “And London is yours.” He fingered a lock of hair falling at her neck The corners of his blue eyes creased with amusement. “Joseph.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Y
OU
WANT
TO
TURN
the screws on Lady
Mareck?
” In the crowded coffeehouse, Nicholas Warre leaned back casually in his chair, shook his head and laughed. “Let me put this in terms you’ll understand, Rutledge. You’re firing a blunderbuss at a twenty-gun brigadoon.”

It was not what Noah wanted to hear, but he smiled. “Perhaps I ought to consider a full broadside.”

Nick only shook his head. “I know a dozen men who’ve been hoping to give her a full broadside for years.” The Earl of Croston’s youngest son had the kind of perfect face that would have ladies trampling each other to attract his attention, but the dark circles beneath his piercing green eyes were something new. “She’ll turn a man’s proposition over her knee and give it a good thumping, and he’ll walk away feeling as if he’s been given a macaroon and a pat on the head.” The corner of Nick’s mouth curved. “She’s impenetrable.”

“Is she, now?” Noah laughed, even as his hand tightened around his coffee. He remembered how she’d looked, standing there in nothing but her underclothes. Watching her maid undress her had turned the screws on
him.
It was easy to imagine what she would look like with all of it stripped away—panniers, stays, shift, all of it.

And not too big a leap to imagine spreading her across that perfectly furnished bed, proving just how penetrable she really was.

God. He imagined how outraged she must have been when he’d followed her into her rooms, and smiled.

“Certainly she and Woodbridge are close,” Nick said, “even if their only relation was through Mareck. But she can’t have much influence over his business decisions.”

“This is about more than just business,” Noah replied. “And my impression is that her influence over him runs deep.” He thought of the way she’d touched Elias, the way Elias’s eyes had warmed when he’d looked at her even as he complained about everything under the sun.

“I wouldn’t doubt she resents the hell out of you over this shipyard business,” Nick said, “though who’s to say what stirs inside that pretty head.” Pretty? Lady Mareck had to be one of the most stunning women in London. “Why not join Woodbridge here in London? No, never mind—anyone can see you’ve practically become a Moor yourself.” Only Nick could say that in a way that made it sound like a compliment. “I doubt Lady Mareck shares your affinity for the Mediterranean. Could be part of the trouble you’re running up against. Spent a year or two in Gibraltar, from what I understand—”

“Gibraltar.”

“Yes, and I doubt she remembers it with much fondness. Trapped in some godforsaken outpost while other girls her age were preparing for their first Season.”

“When?”

“Just before the war, I believe. Her father was lieutenant-general with the engineers there.”

His mind did the math, came up with a year. Lady Mareck.
Josephine.
Gibraltar. An old story of Ahmet’s whispered through his mind, suggesting an impossible connection.

He thought of that painting in her bedchamber. In every other respect, Lady Mareck’s private rooms were a perfect reflection of the lady herself. Elegant. Fashionable. Luxurious yet restrained. But then there was that painting. The Rock of Gibraltar. It took up practically the entire space above her fireplace. Dominated the room. It would be the first thing she saw when she awoke in the morning and the last thing she saw before closing her eyes to sleep—and the thing she would look at while doing anything else that might happen in that bed... But that was a dangerous line of thinking.

“And since we’re on the subject of the Mediterranean,” Nick added, “what can you tell me about Katherine Kinloch that I haven’t already read in the papers?”

“I suppose that depends on what you’ve read. I haven’t met her, if that’s what you mean, though a friend of mind did once.” Ahmet’s wistful, grinning face exploded into his memory.

“Is she a pirate?” Nick asked.

“Not in the traditional sense.”

“Explain the atraditional sense.”

“I would describe Katherine Kinloch as a merchant trader with a penchant for making prizes of vessels of questionable activity,” Noah told him.

But it wasn’t Katherine Kinloch that Ahmet had usually spoken of. It was a young woman he’d met on a voyage to England.

Her family passed the voyage below, sick as dogs. But my sweet little Josephine, she loved the waves.

Lady Mareck—Josephine—had lived in Gibraltar at exactly the right time.

It didn’t necessarily mean anything. There could have been any number of young English girls of military families with fathers stationed in Gibraltar. Josephine wasn’t such an uncommon name.

“What do you want with Katherine Kinloch?” he asked absently.

Nick’s lips tightened grimly. “Every bloody thing she’s got.” Nick began talking about a bill of attainder he was sponsoring in the House of Lords, but Noah was hearing Ahmet’s drunken reverie, telling the tale of the young lover he would never forget—an English girl on a ship bound from Gibraltar to London, on which Ahmet had merely been a lineman. It was surprising that Ahmet could remember a lover at all, he’d taken so many. But this one, this young Josephine, had been special.

It just wasn’t possible that Lady Mareck could be the Josephine of Ahmet’s reveries.

Was it?

* * *

T
HAT
NIGHT
AT
the Bylar musicale, it became clear that as long as Sir Noah was in London, there would be no escaping him. There he was, talking with Lord Bylar himself, casting Josephine a knowing glance that made it clear he was remembering that afternoon.

Oh, Sir Noah. After inviting yourself into my bedchamber, you can hardly imagine I could be moved by your presence at a musicale
.

No. The sudden tension in her spine was entirely due to the fact that Pauline was conversing with Mr. Crumley, and Josephine’s complete inability to determine whether the man had sparked even the slightest bit of Pauline’s interest.

It had nothing to do with the memory of Sir Noah’s eyes roaming over her half-clad body, or the fact that it was impossible not to be aware of him at every moment. She knew exactly where he was, exactly when he was looking at her and when he wasn’t.

Already the company had begun to be seated. Josephine moved toward Pauline, intending to help things along in any way possible, but Sir Noah intercepted her before she’d gone ten steps.

Her fists curled. She made a studied effort to relax them.

Sir Noah’s eyes creased with amusement, as though he could read her every thought and was enjoying himself tremendously at her expense. “Have you consulted a doctor about your nervous condition?” he murmured. “You seem a bit tense.”

“As a matter of fact, I have. He recommended solitude.”

“Then by all means, let us seek it out.”

“The music is about to begin, Sir Noah.” A quick glance told her Lettie and Captain Ryson were already comfortably seated together, and Pauline—heaven be praised—was seating herself next to Mr. Crumley.

“Then let us be seated. Do, allow me.” He showed her to a seat near the back of the artfully arranged chairs, where few eyes would watch them during the performance. She started to object, but the other seats that caught her eye were suddenly filled.

She arranged herself on the chair Sir Noah found for her. He took the liberty of pulling the adjacent chair a little closer to hers before seating himself.

“I find it difficult to believe,” he said under his breath, “that there isn’t a soul in London who has suspected your double life.”

“By the time you leave, will there be a soul who isn’t fully informed?”

“I have no desire to disrupt your life the way you have disrupted mine, Lady Mareck.”

“Then by all means, do let me know if there is any way I can assist with reprovisioning your ship for the return south.”

His eyes had a way of lingering where they didn’t belong—on her lips, the base of her throat, the tops of her breasts.

The music began and conversations quieted.

Josephine fixed her attention on the quartet. Sir Noah’s arm rested close enough to touch her skirts at the slightest motion. From the corner of her eye she saw him flex his right hand. His fingers were long. Thick.

She inhaled deeply. Silently.

Exhaled slowly.

A tiny itch irritated her right shoulder.

Ignore it.

The itch grew. She lifted her left hand and rubbed her fingers over it. Saw Sir Noah turn his head to watch. She didn’t need to look to know his gaze had shifted to her breasts.

Her skin flushed, and she tried to remain perfectly still. Inside her stays, the tips of her breasts grew firm.

She returned her hand to her lap. Realized she hadn’t drawn breath in half a minute.

Sir Noah shifted in his seat. His knee nudged her skirts. It was a strong, solid knee, joining a muscular limb made steady by years of fighting for balance atop the waves. His stockings hugged every contour, disappearing inside large, buckled shoes.

One of Honoria’s favorite proverbs about the size of a man’s feet lodged itself in her thoughts.

Suddenly, Sir Noah leaned close—so close she could feel his breath against her ear when he spoke. “Truth be known, they’re bloody uncomfortable,” he murmured.

She frowned and slanted her eyes toward him.

“My shoes.” He extended his leg a little.

Devil take the man.

She fixed her attention firmly on the cellist. From the corner of her eye, she saw Sir Noah smile.

The quartet transitioned from a lilting, rhythmic piece to a slow and stately one, then picked up the tempo once more. Quiet conversations whispered here and there among the audience. It didn’t take long for Sir Noah to murmur in her ear again.

“When we were discussing your painting, you failed to mention you actually
lived
in Gibraltar.”

Every nerve went on alert. “That is hardly remarkable.”

“Some might argue that point.” And a few moments later, “Being a girl on the verge of womanhood, no doubt you begged every day to return to London.” His whisper feathered her jaw just below her ear, and she shivered.

“Yes. Every day.”

“Not many interesting gentlemen in such a coarse and ugly garrison.”

“Gibraltar is not—”
Coarse and ugly.
“Few indeed.”

In her mind she saw Gibraltar—colorful baskets of flowers adorning tile-roofed houses, the sun sparkling on the sea, groups of children playing on the beach. Sails unfurling on ships leaving the harbor for exotic destinations farther east.

Her heart squeezed. Hard. So hard it constricted her lungs.

“Officers, merchants,” Sir Noah mused under his breath. “Perhaps a wealthy Spaniard or two.”

“Please, Sir Noah. I would like to enjoy the entertainment.”

“By all means.” But a few moments later... “No interesting naval officers on the return to London? Or perhaps you were too struck by
mal de mer
to notice.”

“We traveled by merchant ship.” She looked directly at him to make her next point more clear. “Sir Noah, the music.”

He smiled. “Of course.”

He did not disturb her again.

* * *

W
HATEVER
HAD
CAUSED
Sir Noah’s sudden interest in her time at Gibraltar, it could not continue.

At the card table during her weekly game at Annabelle’s, Josephine divided her attention between her annoying hand of cards and the even more annoying fact of Sir Noah’s busybody tendencies.

Why should he care whether she’d ever lived in Gibraltar? Or even
been
there? Let alone whether she’d found any matrimonial prospects—either there
or
on the return voyage to England.

Someone had told him about her father’s post in Gibraltar. Elias? No. He knew how cautiously she guarded that time of her life. Which meant Sir Noah had been talking about her to others.

The idea set a small nerve aflutter in her belly, which she ignored as she stared at her hand of cards.

And now, armed with what he imagined was special knowledge of her, he was toying with her. Trying to keep her perturbed, as if that could possibly gain him anything but her displeasure.

And she reacted to him like butter on warm bread.

It was unacceptable.

He was only a man—just another of Elias’s business acquaintances, albeit a much closer one, given that he was Elias’s heir. But still, only a man. Who happened to reside in the Mediterranean. On a ship.

She selected a card from her hand.

A
man.
Not a ship, or the sea or a small outpost at the gates to an exotic world. There was no reason to react to him as though he embodied all of those things.

“I’ve heard he keeps monkeys loose on his ship,” Annabelle reported with a wicked light in her eye.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Was there no refuge to be had from Sir Noah anywhere in London?

She bit her tongue to keep from pointing out how ridiculous and impractical loose monkeys would be. It would never do to be seen as defending him— especially during Thursday afternoon whist, from whence Annabelle, Ophelia and Honoria could carry all manner of speculation at lightning speed into the world.

“Monkey
skins
is what I’ve heard,” Ophelia said, sipping her tea. A painted-on mole sat delicately above one corner of her curved lips. “I’m told he serves refreshments from their shriveled hands.”

“Disgusting!” Annabelle declared. “What a dreadful rumor.”

Josephine tried for a change of subject. “I saw Lady Abbingale’s new gown last night. It was everything everyone said it would be. Such lovely lacework on the stomacher.”

But that hadn’t been the Bylar musicale’s main distraction.

“I do hope Sir Noah decides to host something,” Honoria said, as if Josephine hadn’t mentioned Lady Abbingale at all. “He is
such
a fascination. I daresay he could become the catch of the Season. Do you not agree, Josephine?”